Process facilities are used in various industries such as petroleum or chemical refining, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper, or other manufacturing operations. Process facilities use process control systems including various field devices to measure and sense process parameters. The field devices can include tank level gauges, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, valve controllers, actuators and other devices. A process facility can use tens or hundreds of field devices to monitor and control the process(es).
Field devices require calibration at regular intervals of time as prescribed by the field device manufacturer in order to maintain accurate measurements and properly function. If a field device is not calibrated, the process data which that device measures may not be accurate which can affect the quality of the process. The calibration of field devices can be performed as scheduled maintenance at time intervals depending on recommendations of field device manufacturers or based on process criticality where that instrument is used.
However, detecting a field device that has gone out of calibration during operation is difficult. The identification of out of calibration measurement values are difficult to identify particularly when the field device is being used in a process.